Storytime
by cthulhu-with-a-fez
Summary: A collection of oneshots. Current chapter: Unexpected Pregnancy. In which there is some entirely un-planned-for news.
1. Chapter 1

Soul stared up at the podium where Dr. Albarn was lecturing, jotting down notes as his professor gestured animatedly to emphasize her words. He'd been surprised, on his first day of class, that she was barely a year or two older than he was - apparently she'd gone to college early, which didn't surprise him in the slightest. She was one of the most ridiculously intelligent people he'd ever 'd initially signed up for her class only because it filled out two course requirements (he never would have signed up for a class called 'Analysis of Gender Roles in Classical Literature' otherwise), and because he'd heard that she was the only non-boring lit teacher on campus. Unfortunately, no one told him that she was hot. As in, seriously hot. Mile-long legs accentuated by a pencil skirt, and bright green eyes to which he could apply at least three of the flowery descriptors he'd discovered in last week's reading… yeah, he was screwed.

"Alright, guys, that about wraps it up. Remember, you've got a test this Friday, so study for it," she concluded, and the class turned to file out the door. Just as Soul was about to leave, however, he heard her call his name.

"Soul, can you hang back for a second? I need a word with you."

He immediately froze up. A teacher requesting a conversation was a sign of the apocalypse as it was, and if Dr. Albarn was requesting it… He ran a mental check of all the recent assignments he'd turned in, trying to remember whether any of them were missing. He panicked some more.

"Jeez, calm down, I'm not going to kill you," she said jokingly. I just wanted to ask about last week's paper."

"Um. What about it?" Soul asked nervously.

She handed him a thin stack of paper, five or six sheets thick. "Sheet music doesn't count as a paper."

Her eyes narrowed as he turned it over, stomach sinking through the floor as he registered exactly which pieces of sheet music he'd mistakenly given her.

Oh, shit.

"And would you care to explain why this has my name on it?"


	2. Chapter 2

Maka watched as a small herd of leather-jacketed people entered her tiny roadhouse, laughing raucously. She'd seen this particular gang of bikers around the vicinity a few times before, the roar of their engines rattling the pictures on the walls as they drove by. She wasn't entirely sure how to deal with them now that they were actually inside.

Her gaze wandered over to the biker gang, still laughing raucously, and she was about to glance away again when she saw one of the members holding her gaze. He was tanned, with white hair and startling burgundy eyes. His black leather jacket held the gang's stylized skull insignia. He flashed her a lazy grin, and she blinked with surprise when she saw that his teeth were pointed. Somehow, over the din of his compatriots, she heard him chuckle. He turned away and she got back to work with a furious blush.

It was pouring down rain today, water sluicing down the plate-glass window on which the diner's name was emblazoned. Maka stood at the counter, pouring coffee for one of the patrons. She hadn't seen the Reaper gang in almost three months, and she wondered what they were doing. She immediately shook away the thought. She didn't get concerned with roving bike gangs. She didn't! And especially not ones with tanned albino pointy-teethed people in the ranks. Nope, definitely not. She hadn't even spoken to him, damn it! Why was she getting so worked up?

Her train of thought was completely derailed as the approaching rumble of a motorcycle engine approached. She frowned, though, when she realized that it lacked its usual wall-shaking intensity - this wasn't a full gang. Whoever was riding in this weather must either really need to get somewhere, or they were insane. Or maybe both.

The bell over the door tinkled, and she almost burst out laughing. The white-haired biker, object of her most recent thoughts, had walked in with his shoulders hunched, soaked to the bone, and hair dripping - or in other words, the very picture of a drenched and grumpy cat. She probably shouldn't be laughing at him, she thought semi-hysterically, she didn't even know him, but DAMN did he look ridiculous. The little scowl he wore merely topped it off.

"Yeah, yeah, if you're done laughing at me, can I have the largest coffee you have? 'S fucking freezing out there." he grumbled, plunking down on one of the counter seats with a slight squelch. Maka giggled again, but stifled it as quickly as she could.

"I'll just bring you a pot. And maybe a towel," she replied.

The as-yet-unnamed man let out a groan. "That sounds amazing, thanks."

Maka turned towards the back of the diner to retrieve the items, then hesitated. She looked over her shoulder.

"Can I maybe have a name?"

"Soul Eater," he answered, baring his pointed teeth in a grin. Maka tilted her head in consideration, then snorted.

"That would sound a lot more impressive if you didn't look like a wet cat, Soul Eater," she said lightly, before turning back into the kitchen to the sound of the biker's sputtering. She grinned as she scrounged for a towel, remembering the look on his face right before she'd pushed through the swinging door.

Unbeknownst to her, he was now grinning just as madly as she was as he dripped all over her counter.


	3. Chapter 3

Maka stared down at the tiny test stick, glaring at it as though to change the result by sheer force of will. Unfortunately, since the laws of the universe were still rigidly in place, the little pink plus sign stubbornly refused to change color. She felt caught between crying, punching something, and spontaneous combustion, and she wasn't sure which impulse was most prevalent at the moment. As a wet droplet landed on her shaking hand, she realized that her body had chosen the first one.

How could this have happened?

No, she knew how it had happened. Hypothetical questions were just useful for expressing emotion. She and Soul had just gotten back from one of the most grueling missions they'd ever taken (she was never going to Australia ever again). The battle had been well over four hours long, a difficult fight by all accounts even for the meister and her death scythe - and it was no surprise that by the time they got all the kishin slime cleared off of them, Maka had simply been too exhausted to do more than collapse on top of her weapon and sleep for the next sixteen hours. Which meant she hadn't taken her pill.

And given the… ahem, _activities_ the two of them had engaged in when they finally returned to their apartment in Death City, well…

She stared at the little pink plus sign again, steeling herself for the conversation that needed to happen with her partner. She pulled out her phone and dialed his cell phone number, nervously shifting her weight from foot to foot as it continued ringing. Finally, Soul picked up.

"Hey, Maka. What's up?"

Maka heard something crash in the background and winced. This was definitely going to derail her partner's game night. She heard Black*Star shouting at Soul from the background and Soul shouting back, presumably to tell both their ninja friend and Kilik (who often attended Soul and Black*Star's game nights) to quiet down and let him take the phone call. There was some more noise, brief pause, some louder noise, and then finally silence.

"Soul? There's something I really need to tell you."

"Okay, shoot. What is it?"

She scuffed one foot against the bathroom tile anxiously. "Um. You should probably hear it in person?"

She could almost hear his brow furrow over the phone, and his voice was thick with concern as he answered. "Sure. I'll be there in a few minutes tops. Hold on, okay?"

She squeaked out a noise of assent just before the call ended, sliding down the wall to sit on the bathroom floor. She hugged her legs and rested her forehead on her knees, attempting to take deep breaths and wait for Soul to come home.

—

Soul kicked off his boots at the door, tight knot of worry clenched somewhere behind his navel. Maka had sounded weird over the phone. And if it was something she had to say in person… It definitely wasn't anything good.

"I'm back," he called out to the apartment at large, waiting for a response.

"In here."

His meister's muffled voice came from the bathroom, weirdly enough, but he made his way over as fast as he could. She was sitting on the floor, curled over on herself, and shaking slightly. He wasn't sure why until she looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and her cheeks were wet and holy shit she's crying what does he DO -

He drops to his knees on the bathroom tile and gathers her up into his arms, resting his forehead against hers as she shakes underneath him.

"Shh, shh, Maka, it's okay, whatever it is, it's okay, I promise, just tell me what's going on, please?"

She hiccups slightly and looks up at him, and the knot of worry gets heavier at the anxiety and panic in her eyes. Maka always has it together, she never panics. Something has got to be seriously wrong here if she's freaking out this badly.

"What's going on?" he asked gently, forehead still pressed to hers.

"Remember the mission we took in Australia?" she said, voice trembling.

"Yeah," he said, confusion in his voice. Sure, the mission had been tough, but that's no reason for her to be having a panic attack over it almost two weeks later.

"And remember what we did… um, afterwards?" she continued, a slight blush rising in her cheeks at the words.

"Yeeeaaahhh," he answered, drawing out the word. "What of it?"

"Soul, I forgot to take my pill the night before."

"What… oh. OH. Oh, shit, Maka, you're-?"

She nodded, tears trickling down her cheeks again.

"Okay. What are we going to do about this?" he asked her, still slightly reeling from the shock of the realization but cognizant that his partner needed his support.

"We?" she asked, disbelief apparent.

"Of course, bookworm. What did you think I'd do, abandon you?" His answer carried a hint of mock indignation at her perceived lack of faith, but the sentiment was real.

"Besides," he continued, more serious this time. "It's my responsibility too. You wouldn't even have had to worry about it if I'd just used a damn condom."

"It's not your fault, Soul," she said softly, before burying her face in the crook of his neck. He rested his cheek on the top of her head, hands running soft paths up and down her back.

He almost missed her fervently whispered 'thank you', muffled as it was by her mouth against his skin. His only response was to hold her tighter, attempting to soothe her with his proximity and support. They would get through this together, he thought. He would support her in whatever way she needed, including cuddling her close to him as she cried on the bathroom floor.


	4. Chapter 4

Maka sat at her desk, multiple stacks of paper covering it in a patchwork of different assignments. When she'd signed on to be a teacher, she hadn't quite envisioned this level of paperwork. Or stupidity. Seriously, how any of her students got this far in life without the basic ability to spell-check was completely beyond her. On the flip side, however, some of the papers she'd received were actually pretty good. Soul Evans in particular had a certain dry wit that made his papers particularly memorable - she tried not to show it, but she actually enjoyed receiving his work. It didn't hurt that he was hot. As in, _seriously_ hot. She didn't usually give herself over to thoughts of hotness (there were way too many other things to be thinking about and he was her STUDENT, dammit, there were rules about this), but Soul…

NO. Bad thought, squish it! Alright, moving on.

She flipped through the papers, trying to find one that she knew would take her mind off of her distractingly hot student. There was always at least one paper that made her wish she could smack its author in the head with a thesaurus - a good dose of literary rage was just what she needed. Not that one… maybe not that one either… that one she might actually enjoy…

Her flipping was interrupted when the next paper, five or six sheets long, slipped from her fingers to scatter across the floor in defiance of the tiny paperclip with which they'd previously been restrained. Ugh, why did her students always seem to forget to keep their papers together? It wasn't THAT hard to find a stapler. Grumbling beneath her breath, Maka bent down to pick up the scattered pages without paying much attention to their contents. She straightened up after collecting the errant pages, sitting back down at her desk to find out who it belonged to, and froze as she finally registered the contents of the paper in front of her. And two things were made alarmingly clear to her as she stared down at it.

The first was that the pages she held were DEFINITELY not an essay on gender roles in classical literature. They weren't even a paper at all. Complicated tangles of handwritten notes covered the printed staff lines, and even with her near-nonexistent musical literacy she knew this was sheet music - or at least a rough draft.

The second was that her name was scribbled in the margins.

In Soul's handwriting.

She was definitely going to need to talk to him about that, she thought faintly, before carefully shuffling the pages back into order and putting it on top of her filing cabinet. Out of sight, out of mind. She had papers to grade. Her resolve didn't last very long, though, since the corner of the small stack of sheet music taunted her from the top of the cabinet even as the implications continued to percolate in the back of her mind. He wrote her a song. Or was inspired by her. For a song. That he wrote. What did it mean? She wanted to be hopeful and think that it meant he returned her affections, but the more rational side of her mind shut that down just as quickly. She was his teacher. He was her student. There couldn't _be_ affections in the first place, never mind that they were only a few years apart in age and he was kind and intelligent and apparently musically gifted because he wrote her a song -

No. No no _no_ she could NOT be thinking about this. Hadn't she just told herself that she wouldn't think about this until tomorrow? Because she couldn't. She had papers to grade, and things to do, and sheet music to most definitely not think about. She would talk to Soul about it tomorrow after class. Okay. That was a plan. That was a good, solid plan, and she was just going to not think about the sheet music on top of her filing cabinet until then. Now, back to her original objective: finding a paper so ridiculous that she would forget about her insane crush in the first place. Maybe Meme's. She never seemed to have it together…

Eventually, by the time Maka had finished going through all the rest of the papers, she'd managed to bench her thoughts about that sheet music. She managed to go home and get through the evening alright, but when she saw it the next morning (still perched almost innocently on top of her filing cabinet), a tight knot of… well, she wasn't even sure what she was feeling suddenly appeared in her chest. She took a deep breath and picked it up, shuffling it underneath of her lecture notes for the day. Maka just had to get through her class, and then all of this would be resolved. Hopefully. Maybe.

She turned and swept out the door towards her classroom, firmly shoving all thoughts of hot students and sheet music to the side.


End file.
